From very early on El-Erian learned the value of seeing things from multiple perspectives. And he spent years questioning his own beliefs while at PIMCO where he experienced a culture of "healthy and constructive paranoia."

Thanks to Mohamed El-Erian for helping us with this feature.

El-Erian's father earned a PhD and stressed to his children the value of education

"It started with my father who, from a very young age, stressed to his children the value of education and multiple perspectives.

"Education had been his passport out of an Egyptian village and to university in Cairo, a PhD from Columbia University, and to a subsequent career as an academic, a diplomat and a judge at the International Court of Justice.

"He was committed to giving his children even greater opportunities. And he did."

His father spent his limited earnings on his children's education

"For example, he spent a large part of his limited academic/civil servant salary on our schooling and our books. He prompted us to frequently read different interpretations of the same set of “facts,” including a range of daily newspapers that covered the political spectrum. He encouraged us to aspire to a doctorate degree and not just a bachelor or masters. And he urged us to never accept conventional wisdom without questioning it first."

At Cambridge, he became familiar with four very different schools of economic thought

"My father’s influence was reinforced by the education I received at Cambridge University, where I did my first university degree, and my subsequent work environments (the IMF, Salomon and, especially, PIMCO).

"Economics at Cambridge in the late 1970s was not about seeing the world in a particular way. Instead, it was about gaining familiarity with four different schools of thought – from neo-classical to Marxist, and for Keynesian to neo-Ricardian."